


with the windows down

by seasofgreen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Human Castiel, M/M, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:31:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasofgreen/pseuds/seasofgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something to be said about riding in a car with the two people who have changed your existence. (Team Free Will ficlet, Destiel if you squint.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	with the windows down

They've been driving along the pale expanse of desert for a couple of days now, two out of the eighty-seven days since he fell. He keeps a journal to count the days, an old beaten up thing he'd bought when the Winchesters had stopped at a thrift store to buy him a few shirts, two good pairs of jeans, and a pair of black boots. Dean had caught him looking at it out of the corner of his eye, and had tossed it onto the pile of their purchases when Cas hadn't been looking. It's beautiful and leather-bound, and Dean had sat with a beer in the corner of their motel room watching Sam and Cas fangirl over the thing. 

Dean himself is leaning half out the window, driving with one hand while the other hangs in the breeze. His hair is damp with sweat, and there is a lazy grin across his face. Sam is slumped in the passenger seat, asleep with a book across his lap, and Castiel knows more than anything that it's the reason for his companion's good mood. 

Compassion and attachment and the overwhelming need to protect was something he never understood before he met these two men, and now a life without it would mean nothing. The more Castiel thinks about it, he finds that no one - humans and angels and Gods - have never affected him like his boys have. 

His boys. 

Castiel thinks it has a nice ring to it, though he wouldn't dare say it out loud. 

"You asleep back there?" Dean's looking at him through the rear-view mirror, lazy grin still spread on his face. 

"No, Dean." He shifts on the seat. His right arm is almost painfully attached to the leather and he pulls it off with a wet noise. Sometimes he forgets that his body, is so different. 

"Gotta pull over for gas soon." Dean remarks. "You look like you could use a nice stretch, Cas." 

"Without the wings...it is an easier fit." Castiel lets the words slip out of his mouth before he catches them, finally understanding the term "foot in mouth" that Sam had taught him the previous week. It's been eighty-seven days and Castiel has never felt like this before. Before, he would have towered over the entire expanse of desert they're driving through. For some reason, being slumped in the back seat of the Impala, he feels a hundred times bigger. He's not only talking about space. 

Dean's eyes widen almost in-perceivably, but then something wells up in them that Cas is still not really used to. He's seen it a few times before. The aftermath of escaping a den of iniquity, lying on the floor before the Leviathans ate him from the inside out, standing at a river in Purgatory. 

"I guess it is," he says finally. "I guess it is." 

Castiel meets his face in the mirror and smiles back.

It's been eighty-seven days.


End file.
